He was silent,--went slowly up and down,--looked seriously at a war-dance and masquerade of internal spectres,--then stopped. The shadows of dark deeds played through each other around him: suddenly he started up; a lightning-flash of a thought had darted into his heart; he ran to and fro, cried, "Music! let me have horrible music!" and the wedding music from Don Juan, which had hitherto accompanied him, raised the murder-cry of terror. "Divine!" said he; and only single words, only tiger spots, appeared and vanished on the monster as he passed by. "Devilish! the rose's being, the blossom's being,--aye, well! I will bury myself in the avalanche, and roll down; and then I die beautifully on my slumber-island," he concluded, in a soft, faint voice. "O Lilia! insure me one prayer!" cried he, going to meet his approaching sister. "Any one which hinders not my dying," said she. He laid before her the prayer, that she would this very night persuade her friend Athenais into the "night-arbor" of the island, under the pretext that her bridegroom, Carlos, wished to show her to-day two mysteries about Lilia. "I have," he added, "Carlos's voice; with it I can declare to her my loving heart, and then, if she loves me, I will call myself Hiort." "Is thy request sincere?" asked the sister. "As true as that I will be still alive to-morrow," said he. "Then is it soon fulfilled, for Athenais expects me even in the night-arbor; only follow me after seven minutes." She went; he looked after her, and said to himself, "Hasten, arrange the heaven! Fair slumber-island, at once the sleeping-place for the bridal-chamber and for the eternal sleep. O, how few minutes stand between me and her heart!" "Thou art still here, surely?" said he, and looked for his pistol. "Now," cried he, solemnly, in departing, "is the time for the _clear-obscure_ deed, then the bier-cloth is thrown over it," and went swiftly into the arbor. The Spaniard threw a twig into the water, and the black jay spake, in a low tone, "Silent is bliss; silent is death." "The man," said Gaspard, "has something through the whole play like real earnest. I will not answer that he does not shoot himself dead before us all." "Impossible!" said Albano, alarmed; "he has not the force for such a reality." Nevertheless, he could not, after all, properly free himself from the anxious thought of this possibility.